7 days at Shukrani - Saturday

A day of rest!

The plan:

9 a.m. A session with teachers on Quickbooks

10 a.m. Two students booked to reply to emails

11.00 a.m. Visit market with a student for meal preparation

1.00 p.m. Computer room open for practice in QuickBooks

6.00 p.m. Meal with student

Nothing ever goes quite to time, or to plan. Not all teachers turned up, those dealing with emails were 20 minutes late, we didn't leave for the market until close to 12, and the meal was prepared and eaten during the afternoon.The computer room was open from 1-5 p.m., and then we went to the market again to buy a gift (a basket and fruit/vegetables) for our hosts for Sunday.

It was interesting to see that most of the time at least eight students were present and using the computers - and up to twelve at times during the afternoon. May activities are group activites - and even working on the computer takes on a group dynamic as they share information and try to work out how to deal with a particular process.

During the afternoon we enjoyed our meal - ugali and daga. Ugali is a stiff porridge of maize flour, and daga a dried sardine like fish. Beth helped in preparation, I stirred the ugali (briefly) and we ate a pleasant meal with a couple of students mid-afternoon. Daga may never become a personal favourite, but at least it doesn't have the smell of canned sardines.

By the time we had made our second visit to the market I had enough of the day and was happy to rest. I had also paid more than we wanted to for the 'gift baskets' which we took to our host. My question (Ngapi - how much) was answered "Elfu mbeli" - and I thought he said "Elfu mia mbeli". 1200 Tshs seemed like a good deal.... Elfu = 1000, Mia = 100, mbeli = 2. It was 2000 Tshs, and I learned that my grasp of Swahili number words needs work. In A$ it was $2.50, not $1.50 - but when you use such big numbers for money it seems like a lot. My words now when someone fires off a number in Swahili at me is 'pole pole' - it means gently, or slowly. Sometimes it even works.

New lenses

Already we are looking at life differently.

In two months we leave our current work and move out of the house. At work it is a matter of preparing for our successors, smoothing the way for their leadership, and removing the obsolete stuff that accumulates in a work environment. At home it is getting rid of what we don't need , packing what we want to keep, and deciding on the minimum stuff we will need to survive in 2009. For most of the year our home will be a 14' 6" (5 metre) caravan, so a lot of things have to go!

As we work through this process (slowly) it is obvious that much of the stuff we have is superfluous. It's nice to have some of the stuff, but we use it rarely and hang on to it out of habit or 'just in case'. And there are the bits that evoke precious memories.

Somehow we have come to think that these are the things of life, we have to have them, that we need them. Our desire for things, and a consumption driven economic system, has massive consequences we normally don't think about. How do we change and see things differently?

Frank Fisher wrote:
"To live sustainably we must identify and transform existing social and intellectual practices, making them consistent with sustainability. New intellectual and social lenses are needed to correct the astigmatism in our current ways of seeing." (The Age 6/11/2008 p.10)

For the moment we are looking at life and stuff differently. I wonder if this will continue beyond next year. It needs to!